BLT Stages

Abstract Bachelor Project FBT: Invloed van lycopeen tijdens de eicelrijping op embryonale ontwikkeling van individueel gekweekte embryo’s bij rund

In this thesis, there will be looked at the effect of lycopene in individual culture, as negative control DMSO will be used. Lycopene is an antioxidant, there are a lot of oxygen radicals in the air, so there will also be a lot of them in the incubators. Lycopene will reduce the effect of these radicals, because these radicals have a negative influence on the embryo development. With this research there will be looked, if the lycopene is positive for a significantly higher blastocyst rate. First a dilution needs to be made of the lycopene, there will be tested with three different concentrations: 2 µM, 0,2µM and 0,02 µM of lycopene. The negative control will be DMSO with a concentration of 2 µM, this will all be made in the maturation medium. For individual culture, there will be worked in individual culture dishes, these dishes contains of 17 droplets in each dish. So for each concentration one dish will be used and contains 17 droplets, after the collection, the oocytes will be washed in a petri dish that contains lycopene ( the same concentration as the individual dish) and oil. Lycopene would normally destroy the oxygen radicals, but the blastocyst rate of the control is almost the same as the rate with lycopene. For individual culture the blastocyst rate is really good, because for individual, there is an expectation of 20% blastocyst. In this experiment the blastocyst rates have an average between 25 and 35%, this is really good for individual. Also some of the blastocysts were already in there last stage of development, this was not expected. If the groups are individual looked at, to compare with the individual control group with DMSO. Then only the 0,2 µM of lycopene is significant to the control group.

Maybe if more replicates were made, there would be better results for this experiment. Other things that can be done are: fluorescent microscopy to look for the quality of the blastocysts, vitrification and colouring the blastocysts.